Integrated Aircraft Design

The performance of aircraft is not equivalent to flight performance only but to the aircrafts impact on the efficiency of the entire transportation chain. Thus; the simulation of the transportation system constitutes the necessary basis for the derivation of technical requirements and targets for the design of novel aircraft. The selection and weighting of the different economic and ecologic targets depends on the particular future scenario considered.

The department Integrated Aircraft Design practices research on the design of aircraft for future scenarios and the identification of further technology demand. Complementary, the integration of novel technologies into aircraft configurations is investigated aiming at the analysis of the technologies' impact on the transportation system and benefit optimization. In both applications, aircraft design considers the holistic system and goes down to the details of individual technologies.

Within this very complex mission the Institute concentrates on the system's interdependencies which are investigated using fast conceptual tools. Higher levels of details, as they can be necessary e.g. for the reliable integration of novel technologies, are realized by the collaboration with specialized partners.

Therefore, the department practices research in methods of interdisciplinary collaboration. Beyond the coupling of numerical tools and the development of interfaces it is targeted to foster the comprehension between different specialists. This is the fundament to collaboratively design and reliably assess innovative and visionary aircraft configurations.

The Institute of Air Transportation Systems contributes to the comprehension between different disciplines and different system levels. With the design of optimized aircraft it builds the bridge between the development of individual technologies and the analysis and evaluation in the context of the entire transportation system.